Worldwide, More Than Half Of Google’s Searches Happen On Mobile

Google also says it has indexed 100 billion links within apps.

Earlier this year, Google announced that for the first time, it was seeing more search activity on mobile than desktop. The caveat was that this was for 10 countries, including the US. Today, Google has now said this is the case worldwide.

Old news? No. We followed up with Google, which told Search Engine Land that Singhal was referring to the fact that worldwide, mobile searches now exceed desktop.

It is possible that in some individual countries, desktop still tops mobile. The worldwide is for all searches, from all countries, lumped together, Google told us.

It’s important to note that this doesn’t mean that desktop searches have diminished. Stats on desktop search from comScore routinely show the overall amount has risen from month to month. Rather, it’s that mobile searches have been a growing new segment that have caught up and now overtaken desktop search.

On the whole, desktop search has grown. As a percentage, it has dropped. That’s because we’re living in what I’ve called an “always-on search world,” where we’re always able to search. Got a query? Your phone is always in reach, as opposed to the past when you’d have to get to wherever your computer was. So the overall search queries happening have grown.

Singhal also said Google has now indexed 100 billion links within apps. This means that when people are within Google’s search results, and Google knows they have a particular app installed, it can jump them from the results into the app version of a Web page.